Theama Institute

29/09/2026

NEXT WEDNESDAY!

The Soul's Seasons: Reading Transformation in the Book of Nature

Christian mystics have long spoken of two books through which God speaks: the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. Creation has its own grammar of change. Leaves let go, seeds rest in the dark, green returns, and fruit ripens in its time. The soul moves through these same rhythms, though we often resist the seasons we're in or mistake a winter for an ending.

In this Wisdom Session, we'll explore how the turning year can become a companion and guide for spiritual transformation. We'll look at what each season reveals about letting go, hiddenness, renewal, and fruitfulness, and how recognizing our own inner season can bring patience, trust, and compassion to the work of becoming whole.

October 7th at 8pm ET / 7pm CT / 6pm MT / 5pm PT

02/09/2026

01/09/2026

Love at the core is a common claim but...
-What is it actually?
-Why is it so difficult to live?
-How does it happen consistently?
-How does it get integrated into everything?

The presence of specific qualities define love relationship. A few include warmth, expansiveness, acceptance, wholeness, playfulness, compassion, healing. The lack of specific qualities also exists like judgement, clinging, self-righteousness, callousness, etc. What else?

01/09/2026

Join us tomorrow!

THE PURPOSE OF PAIN

Some of the truest things we know, we did not go looking for. They found us in the hardest seasons — the loss, the illness, the unraveling of a life we thought was ours to keep. We rarely choose those seasons. But something is often waiting in them.

This session is an honest look at what suffering does and does not do in a human life. We won’t be tidying pain into a lesson or handing it a purpose it never asked for. Instead we’ll sit with the older, stranger question the mystics kept returning to: how is it that so much of what we come to treasure — compassion, clarity, a faith with roots, a tenderness toward others in their own dark hours — seems to arrive by way of the very things we would have refused?

We’ll talk about the difference between meaning that is imposed on pain and meaning that is harvested from it. And we’ll consider what it asks of us to gather that harvest without pretending the winter was kind.

26/08/2026

25/08/2026

A God Whose Power Is Presence

"Over time, I came to see Jesus’ suffering in a new way. Not as a transaction that paid a debt of sin, as some traditions teach. And not as the breaking of a hardened karmic pattern, as my own teachers had once described it. Instead, I began to understand his suffering as salvific because of his willingness to be fully present to the pain of humanity itself.

In Gethsemane, he did not transcend suffering or bypass it. He entered it completely, so fully that his body responded with terror and grief so intense that he sweated blood. This, I came to believe, was not a failure of strength, but a revelation of power. A power rooted not in control or escape, but in radical presence.

And as this understanding took shape, it began to feel like a reflection of the nature of God as well. Not a God who saves through domination or override, but a God whose power is revealed in the willingness to remain present, to suffer with, to stay, and to love without withdrawing.

For me, this is what incarnation reveals: not a God who rescues from a distance, but a God who enters fully into the human condition and remains."

Dr. Lucille Isadora Tures The Whole and the Holy

Lucille Isadora Tures is a psychologist and spiritual director with 25 years of experience in Christian mysticism. She writes on integration, counter-authoritarian spirituality, and faith that honors human complexity and sovereignty.

25/08/2026

Shadow & Light: How to Awaken the Mystic Within

The course beautifully integrates mystical practices with intellectual exploration, making it accessible to a wide audience—whether someone is drawn to experiential spirituality or looking for a more academic understanding. By combining meditation, contemplation, and healing practices with theological insights, students can engage both heart and mind, offering a path of spiritual depth that resonates on multiple levels.

https://www.theamainst.org/journey-into-christian-mysticism

25/08/2026

The Purpose of Pain

Some of the truest things we know, we did not go looking for. They found us in the hardest seasons. Seasons of loss, illness or unraveling of a life we thought was ours to keep. We rarely choose those seasons. But something profoundly beautiful is often waiting in them.

This session is an honest look at what suffering does and does not do in a human life. We won’t be tidying pain into a necessary lesson or forcing it to have a convenient purpose. Instead we’ll sit with the older, stranger question the mystics kept returning to: how is it that so much of what we come to treasure, including compassion, clarity, a faith with roots, a tenderness toward others in their own dark hours, seem to arrive by way of the very things we would have refused?

We’ll talk about the difference between meaning that is imposed on pain and meaning that is harvested from it. And we’ll consider what it asks of us to gather that harvest without pretending the painful things were prescribed to us or inherently good.

Join us www.TheamaInst.org/calendar

27/07/2026

27/07/2026

Hope is not passive reassurance. It is a conviction that love belongs to the deep movement of reality and is a powerful, creative force for the future.

🌐 Join live or get the recording of The Future Belongs to Hope with Robert Nicastro: https://buff.ly/7msN2Ad

“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Toward the Future)



Images adapted from NASA’s Artemis II flight photographs: https://buff.ly/FBkj4zx